it’s like the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the morning.

it’s like that first cool october breeze of the year.

it’s the feeling that makes you “want this moment forever”.

show me the way towards the fountain of youth;

but leave me half-way

because i really need to be strong.

i need to find my own way.

i’ll fill all of these jars and bring some home to you.

drink it in your backyard.

drink it at our dinner for two.

it’s like the first skinny dip in 80 degree weather.

it’s that first time you see a waterfall.

show me the way down there but don’t say a word when i strip down, swim along top of rocks that will later bruise my feet, and stand tall underneath it.

let it pour down on me.

let it sting my skin.

because i really need to feel alive.

it’s like looking up at everything that’s rushing down and realizing how ******* beautiful life can be.

it’s that realization.

maybe.

she says “i had an epiphany. looking backwards only brings you down, so looking forward must bring you up. it has to be true.”

for the first time, i had seen hope in her eyes.

she thought that night she found her answer, she finally cracked her code.

she figured that if fish stink from the head down then she was going to be a bird.

i picture where she is now and if her thoughts on life have changed after she devoured all of those dead fish. i wonder if she’s still eating them now.

he told me that he had an epiphany and took a fist full of pills but never told me what his epiphany really was.

it was one thing after another with him, he was wild.

not only was he a bird, but he was tiger and even though his stripes weren’t visible, i knew they were real.

i scrubbed that ******* clean more times than i can count.

nothing.

i finally realize now after years of trying to figure this creature out that his so called epiphany’s were only wasted ideas on how to get the hell out of this no-where town. ideas on how to get his stripes back.

they made me question whether or not epiphany’s were real

because i ran into her on the street one day and all i saw were scales.

and he was a tiger out for blood.

i was stupid enough for trying to tame him.

and it took me a long time to leave.

all bandaged up, i think i had an epiphany.

the sea shells are telephones to unknown worlds inside of yourself that you’ve never listened to until you’ve arrived there. until you burn the bottom of your feet raw from the sand. I want to apologize for all of the people that see the beauty in a seagull scooping up a crab on the shore but at the same time i really don’t because I think it’s called survival.

clothes in a drawer from a love in the creek.
from a love hitting off of every rock
every grain of dirt.
a piece of jewelry from a soul in the sand.
from the beached whale.
I’ve never washed or worn anything until now.
growing, swimming, sparkling with the creek, the sand
a beached whale reincarnate.
growing my own limbs for my own clothes.
my own neck for my jewelry.
my own scent of me.

I watch myself lost, trying over and over again to find my answers in things like the paintings on the wall and the torn fabric in the carpet. I blame myself for using these pictures as a shield to cover the holes and I blame myself for never grabbing that ******* carpet and lifting it up. Knowingly letting the dirt settle in and STAIN something that was once beautiful and I apologize that I sit here and stew in it.

Adding to the nicotine stains around me.